Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea by Nikki Giovanni

A resonant, powerful collection of essential and intimate poems from one of America’s preeminent poets

“Giovanni remains an architect of life observtions. . . . The world is a richer place for her three-decade body of work, which becomes a volume thicker with Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea.” — Miami Herald

In a career spanning over thirty years, Nikki Giovanni has created a body of work that's become vital and essential to our American consciousness. Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea is an extraordinarily intimate collection, a masterpiece that explores the ecstatic union between self and community.
Each poem bears the revered cultural icon's trademark of the unfalteringly political and the intensely personal: The elegant "What We Miss" exalts the might and grace of women, while "Swinging on a Rainbow" rejoices about the spaces in which we read; Giovanni commemorates Africa and her family legacy in the majestic "Symphony of the Sphinx" and contemplates America in the heartbreaking "Desperate Acts" and "9:11:01 He Blew It." And in the dreamy "Making James Baldwin" and dazzling "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea," Giovanni gives readers reason to comfort, to share, to love, to change, and to be human.
Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea is Nikki Giovanni's meditation on humanity and soul. It's her revelatory gaze at the world in which we live—and her confession on the world she dreams we will one day call home. Nikki Giovanni is a national treasure as she once again confirms her place as one of America's most powerful truth tellers and beloved daughters.